Bye, bye, CakePHP team
I feel relieved! Since today I am no longer a member of the CakePHP team (at least that’s my conclusion as the password to #cakephp-dev has been changed and I no longer have privileges to manage tickets on trac). I am not really surprised by this move (and the way it was done). It was foreseeable. Anyway, I am not unhappy about it after the behind the scene discussion about my previous article “Lessons learned from loadController(null)” (btw. thanks to nate for the valuable feedback!).
What does that mean for this blog? I don’t know yet, it is something I have to think about in the next few days. Maybe I will stay with CakePHP as it has a great community, but it is also possible that I will move to Rails, Django or some other framework. We will see ;-)
Just that i get it… was that only because of that post? And regardless of that, are some disagreed points with some devs a reason to turn away completely from such a cool framework / community?
Huh? What happened?
Yeah I would love to know what happened also. Some sort of disagreement? f it is, this would not be the first disagreement between the Cake core and others.
When I read your 3 last articles I thought that you overreacted a little bit. Especially with your comment about the tests.
I also agree that this comment could be interpreted in few different ways, but this ways depends from your position as well. Well if you participate in that project as contributor and you have adminictrative rights in Trac and probably SVN you are some kind of “owner” of that project and comment saying “I don’t trust CakePHP” really puts you in a bad light. It’s the same if Bill Gates stand and say “I am using Linux at home” :)
After this I saw your profile and your other blogs and I found that this is your nature - to questionize everything. Well this is not so bad, this is really sounds me as typical QA and in fact your purpose in life matching 1:1 QA’s requirements.
I don’t know what is your code contribution in the CakePHP. Mine was that I found a bug and when I try to add in a Trac, it was already fixed by Nate, so I couldn’t say I am something in that project, other than 3rd party developer.
I think you could still be part of the project even as “Independant” QA which dig into the code and suggest improvements and finding bugs. my philosophy is that QA is most important than Developer :)
I think also Cake Admins are over reacted with this “ban”, but who am I to judge them.
So, chill-out, take a break for a while and then continue to improve things. ;)
I agree,
I’ve learned a lot from you over the past few months and I have to say I like your blog a lot. There aren’t that many cakephp blogs out there and yours will be missed if you close up shop.
But you know, follow your bliss.
Perhaps this was one of those stressers in your life that you needed to remove. I know that when I volunteer on projects for the “better good”, I end up taking on much more than I can safely handle - unintentionally.
Regardless where you go with your blog, I enjoy your writing style and posts. Although CakePHP is what originally brought me to your site, your informative writing style (and as Nik said, inquisitive nature) will keep me around.
As for the CakePHP questions others are asking, I believe this is an internal matter and Dan left out details purposefully. I would think we shouldn’t pry any further.
This is a shame. “Can’t we all just get along.” Losing your blog and contributions will be a big loss. I think that your sentiments on trusting Cake could have been stated better and less bluntly, but most of us are emotional programmers and sometimes we type our emotions. I really hope that you stay with Cake.
Have just started looking into the inner workings of cakephp the last few weeks and have used, read and learned alot from you site. Would really miss your awesome inputs on cakePHP.
If you decide to leave for another framework/language i would like to request that you keep this blog online.
There was no disagreement or problem. We have for a long time stood by the principle that if you were not contributing then you are not part of the core team. From our perspective, dho was not contributing to the core development. That does not mean he has not contributed a great amount to the community. We still make this blog the primary blog on the CakePHP homepage and that will not change so long as the contributions here continue to be of value to the CakePHP community.
But seriously, dho has committed about 3 lines of code. I did however appreciate his quick fixes for my typos. Again, what has been invaluable has been the information on this blog. So, I really hope he continues blogging and even considers submitting some of his many articles to the docs team so they can be included in the new manual.
Dho, what does your position on the team have to do with what framework you use or what you blog about? There are many other people who blog about CakePHP who are not part of the CakePHP team. Are you not still a member of the community? Im not sure what one has to do with the other.
In any case, I hope you stick around.
I say keep it up dho — I know this blog has been hugely beneficial to many developers using cake.
… Though your insights in a django context would be informative as well ;)
WOW! This bytes huge.
But I’d like to Thank You for sharing your knowledge and helping me with cake through your informative articles. I made it appoint to drop by at least once a day.
It’s truly a shame that cake will be losing one of it’s more ardent fans and prolific writers. Seriously, there are less than a handful of people who blog regularly about cake.
Anyway, all this bad press isn’t good. First the book, now you. True communities aren’t about censorship!
Strange…I’m new to the cake game and found this blog very useful. Hope you decide to keep it up.
Shane,
How do you censor someone’s blog? No one is stopping dho from continuing to blog and in fact I encouraged it. So, dont go getting all worked up over nothing.
Does this not smack of middle school to anyone else? Regardless of whether it’s giving people notice before revoking their privileges, or not getting all butthurt when it happens, I think this could be handled with more maturity in the future. Lets not make Cake a “clique”.
I said it when Fabio/H3rald left, and I’ll say it again—I think the biggest weakness of Cake is that the core dev team is quick to cut people out who don’t hold to every dogma the devs do. Fundamentalism, ego, call it what you will, a great community will only count for so long if the core keeps alienating its biggest allies.
(not that they’re neccessarily alienating you, dho. I truly hope you stick around. You do seem to be taking it well.)
gwoo,
Yes, maybe my choice of the word “censorship” was a bit harsh - sorry! I’m checking my thesaurus for something more appropriate. Dude, relax.
What do you think about Anon’s comments?
Anyway, have to get back to baking ;)
I hope you keep blogging about CakePHP. Your posts are always informative and clear.
Already yesterday I was reminded of the whole H3rald thing. I agree with Anon.
The core dev team members need to grow a thicker hide. This all isn’t helping the community.
first H3rald, now you.
I hope you can stick alone, your blog has been tasty and contains so much helpful tips since wiki is gone.
not in the core team ?
you are still in the community right ?, give yourself a bit of freedom. They overreacted/sensitive? i don’t know.
It’s your blog keep it sweet and personal, express yourself. it’s a free world !
try django, but don’t leave cakePHP :P
PS:rails is overrated!
I hope you keep blogging about CakePHP too.
Its true that this all isn’t helping the community. (H3rald, and this)
We need you, man!!!!
I’m a cake newbie and still in the overwhelmed stage and not really following what is going on too closely with the community. What I DO know is that I have gotten some HUGE benefits from your blog esp the Yet Another Data Validation Approach.
I would be sad to see you walk away but since I don’t have any history here I can’t comment either way.
But I do want to say a BIG thanks for your cake knowledge and willingness to share. Maybe you ought to write a Cake book :-)
I do hope you will at least leave this blog up for a while so newbies like me can continue to benefit from your knowledge.
go django !
@all: Thank you very much for all your comments.
@Robert, Jonas, Joel: No, it was not only because of that article, even though for me the discussion afterwards was the turning point where I had to say to myself that I don’t want to work any longer in this team (and gwoo’s comment about me contributing only 3 lines of code and PhpNut’s statement “nice blog post, good to see you feel screwed by the CakePHP team…” in the IRC channel today (http://logs.cakephp.nu/cakephp/chat.log.2007-08-29#line_12_56_PhpNut) confirm this decision). If you get personally attacked for writing such an article (”dhofstet: do you have a clue about code? You have complete access to svn yet you write and bitch about things in the core” <- that was the start of the discussion), well, that’s something I don’t like. It is ok to criticize the article and my work, and there was some good feedback of things I could have done better, but it is not ok to attack someone personally. That’s for me the primary reason for my resignation (even though the Cake team was faster with kicking me out of the project than me writing the resignation mail *g*). But as always with conflicts, both sides made mistakes.
@Nik: I agree with you that my comment could be misinterpreted and that you are some kind of a project “owner” if you are a contributor of that project. But I disagree with your analogy with Bill Gates, as it is only about one part of my comment. If you look at the entire comment, the analogy should be something like: “I use a firewall as I don’t trust the security mechanisms of Windows”. On a first look, that sounds like it puts him in a bad light as he criticises his own product, but if you think about it, you will see that his statement makes sense and is probably the result of longterm experience with Windows and the realization that there can’t be a 100% secure windows. The same applies if I say “I write tests because I don’t trust CakePHP”.
Your point with QA is really good, I didn’t saw it in this way yet. And I have to think about it more deeply. Thanks for the inspiration :)
@Francis: Thanks :)
@Brendon: Thanks :) I think it is only natural for people to ask “Why?” (and it is something I would ask myself in a similar situation). So I explained above what for me the primary reason for my resignation was.
@John: I don’t think it was an emotional statement, maybe after this experience I would rephrase it a bit to “I write tests because I don’t trust CakePHP” (see also my answer to Nik). Sure, it is a bit provocative, but it is what I think and do, and it is honest.
@Lars, kbone: I am glad to hear it is useful for you :) I will keep blogging and I will keep the articles I wrote online, but I cannot guarantee I will still write about CakePHP.
@gwoo: Too bad that trac tells a slightly different story ;-) (sorry for this cynical comment)
@Anonymous: Thanks :)
@Shane: Thanks :) I think the bad press is self-inflicted by the used communication strategy. You can’t cancel a book project/kick someone out of the team without notifying the affected person and think they will be quiet. That doesn’t work and it’s something the team has to improve.
@BikePilgrim: Hm, how could it be handled with more maturity? Any ideas?
@Anon, Daniel: I agree with you. See also the explanation of what for me the primary reason for my resignation was.
@speedmax, minskog: Thanks :)
@tyhilltx: I don’t know which version you use, but if you use Cake 1.2 I would be careful with this approach as it was developed for 1.1 (and I never used it with 1.2). With 1.2 you shouldn’t need this approach anymore as the built-in validation is much more powerful than in 1.1.
I don’t plan to write a Cake book, but I am open to support such a project.
As I mentioned before I will keep up the blog, even though it is possible that the focus will change.
_nate_: here?
dhofstet: yes
_nate_: why do you insist on publicizing private disagreements?
_nate_: don’t you understand that most people consider that rude?
_nate_: also, when did you ever confront anyone about failing tests?
_nate_: no one I talked to on the dev team said you ever had anything to say about them
dhofstet: well, I think it is obvious that there are disagreements if someone gets kicked out of a project
_nate_: actually, in this case not really
_nate_: it was a simple matter of the fact that you’re really not contributing anything that requires dev-level access
_nate_: however, as far as disagreements go, I will say it’s awfully rude to insinuate that people were breaking tests, especially the idea that you were expected to fix them
_nate_: being a subscriber to the TDD philosophy, you should know quite well that breaking tests are a part of the development cycle ;-)
dhofstet: I know that, but I think that if someone breaks a test he should also fix it
_nate_: are you talking about breaking existing tests or new tests being added?
dhofstet: committed tests
_nate_: okay, that doesn’t really answer the question
_nate_: in many cases, one person will commit a failing test, and another person will commit the code to fix it
_nate_: are you saying this is a bad thing, or that the test should not be committed until it passes?
dhofstet: it is ok to commit them, but it should be visible when you run the tests that a test failed because some functionality is not yet implemented
dhofstet: but there could also be the policy, that you don’t check-in tests which fail
_nate_: okay, that seems like a pretty counter-productive policy, especially when we have team members dedicated to writing tests
Two hours later, still waiting for answers…
Also, for the (Trac) record:
http://www.ohloh.net/projects/3176/analyses/latest/contributors
and
http://www.ohloh.net/projects/3176/contributors/30409/commits
Look on the second page and tell me how many of those 158 changesets don’t contain the word “typo”.
Sad to hear this. I think this blog contributes a lot to the CakePHP learning curve, at least it has for me.
Even if you don’t write about this framework in the future, does it mean you won’t use it for further projects?
@nate: To me it looked like the discussion was finished. Anyway, for which question(s) do you want an answer?
And to your second comment: does it really matter whether a commit fixed only a typo?
All of this is sad to see. My philosophy has always been to find the problem and fix it. Pointing fingers is useless exercise because it doesn’t solve the problem.
I think the Cake Foundation should learn the nuts and bolts of Building a Community, http://www.techlearning.com/blog/2007/08/the_art_of_building_virtual_co.php . The key to any relationship or community is TRUST.
Another suggestion would be for bakers to stop bashing other PHP frameworks, i.e. Zend, Symfony and CodeIgniter. This doesn’t help the PHP community with the businesses or enterprise adoption.
Enterprise people use different metrics when choosing frameworks; What’s it user base? How many developers are in my city, will the framework be around in a year? Is it actively being supported and enhanced? Are bugs promptly dealt with and fixed? What scalability features are there? They’ll create small sample app and benchmark against something they already have.
Anyway, hopefully cake doesn’t end up like CodeIgniter - forked!!!
Well, as you recall, myself and other members of the dev team have had several discussions with you regarding how to handle disagreements about the code. You were given access to a private IRC channel in which you could talk with any one of us at any time that you had a criticism or suggestion. However, instead of taking advantage of this, you chose to air any and all disagreements you had in an open forum, without even having the decency to give your teammates a chance to offer their side, which any one of us would have freely given. In fact, let me be clear on this: I cannot recall a single time which you said or asked anything on IRC without having been addressed directly. You just don’t initiate.
Now, I had no direct involvement in the decision to remove you, however I have come to see that it was the correct one, as you continued (and continue into the present in your comments) to abuse the privilege of a private communication channel even after numerous requests to stop, and after being instructed numerous times on appropriate behavior when you’re on a team.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about disagreements. In many ways, the quality of the framework itself is the byproduct of intense disagreement between myself, Garrett, and Larry, and the 3 of us wouldn’t have it any other way.
As far as I’m concerned you were off the team long before you were “kicked” off. Your behavior, especially in handling this situation has consistently been the exact opposite of what I consider good teamwork.
My point in the second comment was so that you or others wouldn’t try to (mistakenly or otherwise) exaggerate your contribution to the project.
However, that’s only in regards to your contribution to the project itself. Your contribution to the Cake community overall has been invaluable. I can say without hesitation that you are the most knowledgeable and prolific writer in the CakePHP community, and now that I’m done setting the record straight, I hope we can put this issue behind us. I can’t wait to see more quality posts coming out of this blog. I enjoy them just as much as the rest of your readers.
Mutiny on the… cake!
I’m torn. part of me feels like cakebaker was overly punished over a disagreement. When one of the lead members talks about being all for disagreements, he sure doesn’t act like it. And when he criticizes bringing such disagreements to light so other people can get an idea of what’s going on, what does he do? They then go on to pretty much say “he wasn’t much help anyway.” I find that a horrible argument from someone who then goes on to compliment the blog. In other words, they like the free advertising! This part of me thinks it might be best to take down this blog. All of these insults/comments are opinion based, and don’t need to be forever trapped in Google when cakebaker goes applying for a job. Why support something that finds humor in you feeling screwed?
The other part of me, finds this blog super useful. A lot of bakers did/do. Cake is still a great framework, even if we don’t like it’s internal practices, any publicity is good publicity. Or something like that.
dho, screw them..
All you are doing with this blog is building up their empire and teaching young bakers who have been left blinded by cake’s massive inability in introducing them to the framework. They obviously they don’t want you be a named part of it … so move on :)
Any organization needs to accept criticism even if it’s from its working member base. So what if it was made public!! Are the cake devs really naive enough to think that many of us don’t already know these issues that are plaguing the framework?
It’s unfortunate because most open-source software grows and adapts to the increasing number of supporters and users. Cake seems to be the exception where personal pride and self-preservation becomes foremost over quality of code.
If you remember back to my run in with them:
http://cakebaker.42dh.com/2007/06/15/what-happens-if-you-do-a-request/ (read the comments)
I was completely snubbed out, almost damn near threatened, that if I was NOT allowed to develop the ideas behind CakeCollab.org simply because THEY wanted to do it first.
Since that day, in I refuse to affiliate myself with anything cake. I continue to use their software only because it’s the best solution for PHP right now.
I should take my spite and build CakeCollab under a more non-assimilate name and corner the market from them :)
Who’s in ?! ;)
- Hosting with pure-cakephp production environment
- Automated Package Manager
- Answers (like ExpertsExchange / Askville)
- Project Manager for programmers / companies.
- Wiki
etc…
@dho,
I deserved that one. Please, consider remaining active in the community. Removing your access was not meant in any way to signal that we did not value your contribution, and we both know it had nothing to do with a disagreement over loadController.
@bparise,
your comment is just way off base and down right obnoxious for several reasons. One, you think CakePHP gets paid by the google ads on dho’s blog? And where is this so called empire? Cause maybe I could use it to buy a house instead of living in a one bedroom apt listening to people like you complain. Second, no one said you could not see your ideas through. In fact, it was quite the opposite. We asked you to help the Foundation bring some of these ideas which were already in progress to the community faster and we felt the community would benefit more from a single effort. To me it seems like you are the one that wants it all for yourself. Third, you say “Cake seems to be the exception where personal pride and self-preservation becomes foremost over quality of code”, yet you go on to later say its better than anything else in PHP. So, I don’t see your logic here. Fourth, you refuse to affiliate yourself with cake, yet you want to corner the market? Just full of contradictions today arent you. Lastly, considering your two greatest contributions to the community have been complaints, inside of comments, on a blog, about how you want to make money off of cakephp, I am not sure many in the community are upset that you dont want to affiliate with Cake. Good Luck.
Hi dudes, im just a brazilian mate… lover of cakePHP team job.
Time in time ,i see a “guerrilla” between caketeam and contributors, and to me the QA is, in a simple way,why?!
I’m nor a contributor or a teammate, only a user trying to fly with it. Ready to fly, with the help o the team and developers.
Nate, while you are a sergeant , we are your soldiers, and we need your help dude, to take the easy way.
CakePHP is a very good framework in PHP and i knew that my job on this team takea litlle party. I’ll try to help the team in any question that they ll have, my promise, is your too?!
Can you contribute?! i’m sure that you can, in either way you can, and you will, because you,andme, still trust in cakePHP team.
The victory became to us, CakePHP team and learners,we fight every day, trying to keep us in a high level community.
Gwoo, i’m a learner, and you are the teacher. But Nate and team are the coders.., and we need their work, like your work, dude.
We know that that this guys are the best developers in PHP, they did miracles for us, don’t strage if they refuse our help, b’cause they are ready to help us in any situation.
This is our moment, hora, ora, 時間, hora, Stunde, heure 시간
The secret was “keep the cash coming”, deep and purple, the guns are pointed to the roses, but the iron,made the victory easy to us.. we win
Team.. please.. keep we united!
“The point is dont complain about something that is in development and you know is alpha. If you want to use alpha then you are accepting the possible bugs and also accepting the responsibility to the rest of the community to help out.”
help dudes, what we need is help..
I hope you’ll keep blogging on CakePHP, dho. It’s been great, and we’d hate to lose you.
dho, I love your blog as much as other bakers do.
Since I was introduced to CakePHP months ago, your blog has become one of the most valuable resource about this framework for me. What a pity if you leave the community now and move to another path :(
Hope you will continue blogging about cake.
@gwoo:
First, dho is helping to _build_ the cake empire. Everyone knows how invaluable he is to the community and I was expressing the fact he shouldn’t continue to support you guys (though this blog) if you continue to alienate him.
Second, I was approached by a _very_ defensive PhpNut about the cakecollab.org project. Not an “oh great, lets team up” .. but a .. “we are planning to do that. so you can’t. or i’ll crush you” :) The foundation has my CLA from god knows how long ago — I have tried numerous times to come on as a contributor and have been left without an answer time and time again.
At the end of my conversation with PhpNut I asked again to help contribute. He said.. “Well, send me an email with your resume and I’ll get back to you”. Sorry, I wasn’t about to get brushed under the rug for a 3rd time!
Third, it’s no ones fault but your own that you guys haven’t created income streams from CakePHP yet. You guys have been sitting on CakeHost.com for what, 2 YEARS NOW?!?? Offer support for an hourly fee or open yourselves up for consulting work. Create a book and offer it for digital download. There are a ton of ways you can make money off this gig. I don’t buy into this altruistic mentality that open source development automatically denies you a right to earn money from your hard work.
Do I want it all for myself? Yes, but I’ll share :) Don’t think for a second I will work my tail off for the SOLE benefit of just the community - nor should anyone else!!!!!!!! (dho - sell access to your blog for $10 per year — i’ll prepay for a decade)
One of the main goals behind cakecollab was to compensate EVERYONE for their contributions — not just a pat on the back and a seemingly anonymous existence. Pay these great devs to add their components, plugins, etc and then give them royalties for every download — that’s a huge incentive for developers to contribute quality work.
Last, my contributions to cake go far beyond this blog. I been with you guys since rc3 and have submitted many tickets to trac and have spread your good name to every developer I have met.
Your initial response to ANY criticism is you immediately try to degrade a person’s contribution record and make feeble attempts to make them feel an unimportant member of this community. I didn’t know you had to have your “cakephp contributors official license” in order to be allowed to bitch. I’ll remember to send in my application for it … oh wait, you already have it.
@Brandon Parise: If you bothered to look, you’d notice that Daniel’s blog is still at the top of the list on cakephp.org. Before you go around making senseless accusations, try to pay attention. Also, once again for the cheap seats, I am all for disagreement. What I am not for is a lack of mutual respect among teammates. In support of both assertions I submit to you Chris Hartjes’ blog as exhibit A. He and I have disagreed on many different things, but (a) he actually comes to me to discuss it first, and (b) (and this is important) he doesn’t publish the details of private conversations without letting me know beforehand (and for the record, this was also the case *before* he worked for the CDC… I figured I’d throw that in there since I know how legalistic you people [the critics] like to get, and I’m sure someone was just waiting to call me on that one). I defy you to prove to me that such behavior isn’t disrespectful.
@all: Thanks for your comments!
@Nicolas: At least in the near future I will still use CakePHP.
@Billy: I agree with you that you have to find the problem and fix it. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done :| And in a situation like this one it is probably the best solution to go different ways, as the point up to which it was possible to fix the real problems has been missed.
Thanks for the link to the article about building communities.
Yeah, bashing other PHP frameworks doesn’t bring anything.
@nate: I think you don’t expect an answer to this comment. Just one question: What do you mean with “as you continued (and continue into the present in your comments) to abuse the privilege of a private communication channel”? How can I abuse this “privilege” if I no longer have it (and didn’t had at the time I wrote this post)?
@bill: I think people will make their own image if they read such a comment from a core developer.
I won’t take-down this blog, as it would mean to destroy what I built-up in the last 1.5 years and it would primarily affect people looking for help. That’s not the right thing to do for me.
@Brandon: I can imagine the reaction ;-) And I can only repeat my comment I wrote then (a comment not everyone was pleased with *g*): “Just build it, dammit :) Whether the Cake Foundation welcomes it or not. It is a good idea and worth to be realized. And a bit of competition is usually not bad ;-)”
@Brazilian dude: I have to admit I don’t understand your comments resp. what you try to say…
@Aaron, c4k3: I am glad to hear that, thanks :)
@Brandon: Have a look at http://cakedevelopment.com
@nate: On the one hand you call the behavior of publishing details of private conversations disrespectful, on the other hand you do it yourself. And if you look through the comments here you will notice that you are the only one doing it. Yes, I quoted the first two sentences of a longer private conversation, but only to show what the tone of the discussion was and I didn’t mention a name (which would have been disrespectful).
@cakebaker: ‘Just one question: What do you mean with “as you continued (and continue into the present in your comments) to abuse the privilege of a private communication channel”? How can I abuse this “privilege” if I no longer have it (and didn’t had at the time I wrote this post)?’
That’s technically two questions, but I’ll humor you. ;-) Firstly, what I meant by “into the present” was that your comments were referring back to communications which were heretofore privileged. Secondly, you’re kidding me, right? Private conversations were the entire basis for your previous post.
‘On the one hand you call the behavior of publishing details of private conversations disrespectful, on the other hand you do it yourself.’
Yes, my doing so was intentionally tongue-in-cheek. That should have been obvious, but not everybody appreciates sarcastic humor. :-P
@cakebaker: you mentioned an IRC discussion above (http://logs.cakephp.nu/cakephp/chat.log.2007-08-29#line_12_56_PhpNut ) . I took the time to read further down, and it is interesting to see who you abuse one single line of that discussion for your purpose, leaving out what PHPNut said aswell:
at 14:07, PHPNut states:
>battez: take it how you want. I have not publicly said anything about him, and do not plan to unless things go further then they have already
>I run a tight ship on this project, and this code is where it is today cause that ship has a good crew
> I hope he posts the recent private chat he and I had on his blog. But I doubt that will happen…
It seems as if PHPnut has less to hide than you do. At least, it is clear that he did not mean to offend you with his comment at 12:56, which was obviously sarcastic and not offensive as you interpret it.
And I am afraid that this is what it’s all about: hurt feelings. Too bad that you are taking this out on the community. I still hope you and the rest of Cakephp core team find ways to get along, as your blog has always been valuable.
This is better than watching a soap opera and I’ve got my popcorn ready. OK - all kidding aside, this sucks huge and is a big blow to the cake “community”.
I promote cake amongst friends and colleagues. The slack I always get is that when they’re searching Google they end up with dead links, i.e. to the original wiki, people who were using cake but switched to RoR or the infamous tutorials that revolved around 1.1 and don’t work with 1.2 because of all the changes aka depreciated form stuff. Or the performance benchmarks which I’m still trying to reconcile myself. So the conclusion they draw is that cake isn’t a mature framework and that it’s a nothing more than RoR’s wannabe.
The point is that Daniel’s blog would just help fuel that perception if he should decide to take it down. cake is a good framework. It’s time for the cake founders and it’s users to get their sheeit together and resolve the personality issues and focus on the project. And as people have pointed out - build a real community. A small suggestion would be a code of conduct. Personally, I came over from CodeIginter and IMHO, they are a friendlier bunch of folks who are willing to help and share.
A lesson/fact people should keep in mind is that superior products may not make it in the market place. Look at all the products/competitors Microsoft has killed off. In the end, it’s the consumer who decides. In our case - fellow PHP developers ;)
Anyway, Daniel thanks for your contribution :) I’ve personally appreciated your great articles which have save me hours of writing my own or even worst - fishing through the cake code.
@Brandon Parise : i am in.
Folks, This is getting a bit dramatic. it’s just going on and on..
To me the overall reaction from the readers is generally surprised , lots positive comments with lots of encouragement and love.
There is no point argument the right or wrong on things, there is all sort of argument from different prospective. (irc logs, come on logs is stored on a publicly accessible domain name AKA “public domain”)
I really like the helpful, core team, great teamwork, talented with their own style and a bit of ego..
Just historically a little bit harsh on the community effort, for me Brandon’s idea is great, Cake receipt is what we needed, unofficial documentation effort has been turn down, I have no doubt the community respect the dev-team.
You guys are have great minds, there is no point posting stuff like “how to build a community, how to communicate with your user”. we all understand that, It is just obvious Daniel’s is a natural project publicity super star(dho, u hope u realise that), he is passionate, and put himself out there with those sweet posts, highlighting new activity in cakeforge.
I have to admit i am quite a dictator on my own projects, there something we all need to learn.
Constructive criticisms should welcomed, be friendlier, more welcoming, recognize others, at the end of the day we need both side to make open source work..
not to mention there is enough sterotypes on programmers
eg “geek loves bashing each other behind keyboards.”
:)
You need to go django. I’m not going to discuss the details but rails can’t scale and the reason I abandoned CakePHP was the actual community. Nobody helps, nobody minds but their own business. The last bad experience I had with the community was about the bakery (I still don’t understand why is it “opensource”) I wanted to use the code to start my own community and found out the trunk was broken as hell. I reported a few bugs a few got taken care of but it was still unusable. The trunk is not up to date with the production site. I even asked if I could have a copy of the code running the production site and I was fully was ignored.
I posted the bugs on the google forums trying to get the attention of the core developes and the feedback I got (core devs didn’t even reply) was: who cares it works fine live so why should we bother.. I was never able to use the bakery code and I left the community. I’m now using django, making things happen in 1/2 of the time and having my problems solved immediately by just asking in the IRC channel.
Best,
Sebastian
@all: Thanks for your comments!
@nate: I recommend to reread your and my comments. With that the discussion is finished for me.
@The Mullet: I think it is a bit difficult to use sarcasm in written language. The first part of the sentence (”nice blog post”) is obviously sarcastic and ok, but the second part (”good to see you feel screwed by the CakePHP team”) is in my opinion simply misplaced, independent of what was said later.
Sure, I could publish this private conversation, but what’s the point of it? I didn’t publish private conversations up to now (with the exception of quoting two sentences I used to explain my resignation), and I will keep it that way.
The reasons I published it are: a) to inform people I am no longer a part of the CakePHP team, and b) to show that’s it not ok to kick someone out of a team without informing the affected person. The failure I made was not to write earlier about this topic, at the time the book project was cancelled…
@Beth: “This is better than watching a soap opera and I’ve got my popcorn ready”
*g*
Yes, CakePHP is a good framework, but it has, like every other framework, its weaknesses like the problem with the tutorials you mentioned.
@speedmax: “there is no point posting stuff like “how to build a community, how to communicate with your user””
I disagree, I think the communication with the users could be improved. If I read a comment where someone says he applied to help with documentation but he never got an answer, and the answer to this comment is something like “I doubt you really wanted to help”, well, then I have to say something is wrong.
@Sebastian: I will try django to look how I like it, as I heard a lot of good stuff about it.
In my experience the cake community is usually helpful, but there are also times nobody helps.
From following the google group I think you are not the only one who has problems with the bakery. I think the bakery has a rather low priority. But not getting an answer should not happen. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be a single case (see also my answer to speedmax)…
@cakebaker:
…(with the exception of quoting two sentences I used to explain my resignation)…
Pasting 2 sentences you use out of context does not show what the entire conversation was about.
I wish you would paste our recent private conversation in full, or give me permission and I would be happy to oblige.
[...] entire discussion caused by my previous post is a great source to learn [...]
@Larry: Please read carefully what I wrote earlier and you will see that it doesn’t matter what the conversation was about, as it was about what was said in those quoted sentences. Those sentences are not ok for me. And for that you don’t need more contextual information than I provided.
I can only repeat myself: What’s the point of publishing this private conversation?
cakebaker,
you posted to your blog before we had a chance to say anything to you. The same thing happened with the book project. Remember you are 10hrs ahead of us? By the time we wake up you have already posted. Once and for all, this has nothing to do with a disagreement. Plain and simple, you were not good enough, did not act as a valuable team member, and were not helping the community by being part of the dev team. You do help the community through your blog which is more than many, and we have always appreciated that contribution. But your dismissal has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with you. Pay special attention to the words below because this is what it takes to be a member of dev team.
@all,
The only ones who can build a better community are you, the members. Same thing goes for your home town, your country, or the world. Do not point fingers unless you are looking in a mirror.
Thank you to those that appreciate the time, commitment, passion and energy it takes to produce the best framework for PHP.
Just wanted to share my own view about this issue:
http://www.cricava.com/blogs/index.php?blog=6&title=response_to_dho_leaving_the_cakephp_team&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
I’m really sorry to see all of this banter going on yet again (see: cake book fiasco)… just when I was getting the sour taste out of my mouth, here we go again.
None of this helps the community. Devs can argue, but for the sake of the community, please keep it between yourselves! I realize qwoo, nate, and larry are all just trying to extinguish the fire and/or clear their names, but the longer this goes on in plubic, the worse it reflects on cakePHP. I love cakePHP, but when I see these sorts of things going on it really makes me lose some respect for the wonderful project that lies behind the public arguments.
And dho, PLEASE don’t leave the community nor your blog. I have been an avid reader since before you were even in the dev team. It would be very dissapointing to see you go (especially like this)…
Judging by the number of comments, it is nice to see the cake community respond and rally to a “crisis” like this.
Daniel - stay in the community and fight it out. There comes a time in development of Open Source software when the Software becomes bigger and more important than the core developers.
CakePHP is a great software and Larry & co are great programmers though they are very poor managers and some of their policies are IMO outright against the spirit of Open Source - but - hey this is open source such things are to be stood against!
Mark my words - if CakePHP team continues to stifle the community someone will fork the framework.
So once again stay around.
@all who is trying to compare recent Daniel failure in locution with cake book: HEY! could you imagine that this book about 1.2 IS ALREADY available? Even before 1.2 is released as stable? NO? So wtf are you talking about?
@Daniel: I’m starting to worry about you a little bit. You said ‘I don’t trust CakePHP’ and instead to clear this thing out (just be more specific what you had in mind saying this sh*t) you tried to told us in your blogpost that it is us who is dumb here, because we understood your ‘I don’t trust’ exactly like it is stated. Why are you sad that you’re not part of dev team of software product you don’t trust? Do you want dev team share every their thoughts about development in dev channel with someone who don’t trust matter of existency of this team? Do you want dev team trust you, if you’re able state that you don’t trust something they and you were working on? And mostly important: I can’t find anything reasonable about what caused your recent lack of trust to CakePHP. If reason was recently added failing test which proves some misbehavior in development version, then you’re funny kid.
Boys will be Boys! All this TESTOSTERONE.
Here’s great article, “10 golden rules for running an open source project” the cake core team to read and ponder - it’s written by Greg Beaver (PEAR and other projects)
http://greg.chiaraquartet.net/archives/171-10-golden-rules-for-running-an-open-source-project.html
@all: Thanks for your comments!
@gwoo: As you mentioned the book project, I think it is interesting to see what happened there: http://www.h3rald.com/blog/42, it seems as at that time the publisher got informed about the cancellation, but not the author. Hm. And you say you didn’t got a chance to say anything to me before I wrote this post. I was in the IRC channel at the day my access rights got removed. And you were there, too. So, what was the problem that you said nothing? And if you look at the top of this blog you will also notice that I have an email address. Enough chances to say something, wouldn’t you say? Oops, sorry, I forgot I am supposed to be the bad guy here who makes all the failures ;-)
@bkuhns: I think this entire discussion would have taken a different direction if the first comment from a member of the cake team was something like “sorry, we made a mistake that we didn’t inform you that you are no longer a member of the team… bla bla bla. Thanks for your contribution”. But if there is a “we don’t make failures” mentality, well, then such a thing is difficult. I hope the team will learn from this discussion.
@Tarique: Great comment, I agree with you.
@unbeliever: Well, when people compare this situation with the cancellation of the book project then it is because of http://www.h3rald.com/blog/42.
I hope I could clarify what I meant with that statement in my answer to your comment in the other article. But if there are still questions, just ask ;-)
@Beth: Thanks for sharing this link!
I will not read all the comments. All I can say is that some of your blogposts were really helpfull for me at the time when I was working on a CakePHP project. Well, time to move on, I guess. :)
I’m sorry Cakebaker, I entered your name when I was posting by accident!
I think we should stop criticizing stuff we don’t even know about. Daniel has the right to complain about inner workings of the CakePHP team, since he was a member of it, but some other people talk as if they knew anything about it.
@Tarique: I mean you talking about CakePHP’s core management skills. What the heck do you know about it? Just as easy I could criticize your own personal management skills.
@Mariano - I have been around for long enough in the CakePHP public list and have seen several instances of high handedness *in public* which are not in the the spirit of OSS - some of the people affected have commented above already so I wont elaborate
So heck yes I know about it and several people know about it as well!
Did I ever mention anything about the internal workings of CakePHP core team? No!
I am talking about the public face of things… My gentle advice to you would be don’t get so worked up, think about it and see the truth in it and then see if you can do something about it.
Developers come and developers go - great software stays
@Tim: No problem, I fixed it. And thanks for your comment!
@Mariano: I hope you will see what I have written not only as complaining but also as feedback. And the same applies for what others said. See also Tarique’s advice.
I honestly can’t believe this happened AGAIN! I wonder when some people will wake up… Oh well, it’s they’re burden now, not mine!
Who’s next?
@Daniel: take a break and look around: luckily there’s not only Cake out there…
@Fabio - running away is not a solution unfortunately….
@Tarique: sure, but staying isn’t either. And besides, things like this do make you realize that is always better to keep something else open in life.
Although this is a rather unpleasant event, i do see this is a valuable learning experience.
audiences (developer/community)
politics of open source
communication among the team
project management
@cakebaker yes, i wouldn’t say those post are negative, you listed problem, feedback, summery in most of them. may be more gentle next time (blog title). :P
@fabio off topic, but how is rails working out for u so far ?
@speedmax
I became really fond of the Ruby programming language, which made me discover a new, more elegant and flexible way of programming. Rails is great so far, I modified the Typo engine for my site, and I’m currently developing another from scratch.
The only thing I don’t like about Rails is that deploying it and running it is not as easy as PHP, I must say that. But once you get used to it, there is no coming back to the PHP world.
abc: your recent commit breaks 2 test cases: sdfjhdsf and kfjdhsdkf
def: oops! I am sorry for that/yes I know but/anything else
def: I/xyz/you should blabla now/soon/later
Team work.
@cakebaker I appreciate what you did for CakePHP community. I really do. But as far as I know, list of published comments on h3rald article you’re using in your argumentation is ‘far from complete’. And I hope that some ppl here (including you) are aware of this fact too, so I’ll take it as a joke. Let me ask one more question, please: are you prepared publicly state ‘I trust CakePHP’ when it will include more tests and every one will pass in released version?
@everyone who is still listening and able to write tests: why not help make everyone happy? :D
Hi, first time looking for some article about the best framework in PHP (that´s what i´ve been told about Cake)… I think this post is completely useless, looks like a “gossip show”… please the main “actors” of this show, try to speak about your personal differences in private, because you dont make a good impression of Cake to newbies like me… just an opinion… Have a nice day.
Back from holidays, woww one hour reading all the posts !!!
Just few comments :
1) Daniel, keep on the blog, you love cake
2) If so many people are reacting (even the core dev team), means that nobody is perfect. Everyone as to learn …
3) I am ignorant about the past stories of cake community
4) Actually I have not much time to take care of 3)
5) I love working with cake as everyone posting here (or almost).
6) I have been questioning myself about cake’s future and Chris’s article :
http://www.littlehart.net/atthekeyboard/2007/08/28/when-do-you-take-your-ball-and-go-home/ and now all this
Summary : I am optimistic and all this sounds great. When basic community people (as I am) and core dev teams are writing on same “topic”, that sounds they are linked by the Framework .. so, all this is quite “healthy” somehow.
@Daniel: my invitation for a break (or work) in South of France is still valid :-)
@cakebaker: I quite understand you. Because I’ve been through this myself. I wanted to make a version of CakePHP’s manual and I had to shut it down. I played the politics to get it done, and yet I was redirected to /dev/null - no answers, no news.
@gwoo as representative for Cake Foundation: I won’t dig into the reasons of this flame. But one thing I deem as very important for sure: this cakebaker’s reaction and many of these reactions we’ve seen ARE DUE TO THE RESTRICTIVE BEHAVIOUR OF CORE TEAM (Cake Foundation).
If there’s a mistake all around CakePHP is that it’s not Open. It might be Open Source, but its community logic is not. Or you accept the fact that the core team “will do” the feature or the need in the future, or please leave the room. Humn… It happened to me in Commented version for CakePHP manual.
I do not know how many initiatives have been aborted by Cake Foundation, I do hope they’re few. Because two things would happen: either the CakePHP project would lose power of growth or it would provoke a fork. CakePHP does not need a fork, yet there’s a lot of energy available, and I’m very sorry to say that: CakePHP Core Team is not using it the best way, IMHO. It would have to be more decentralized, IMHO again.
@Dérico
Very nice comment! I agree with a lot of what you have to say. Many time myself I have been met with the “iron curtain” when it came to offering my contributions to the framework. I simply gave up trying :)
At the same time I can understand (to some degree) why the dev’s are so closed off. I compare it to a mother sending her daughter off to school for the first time. The mother doesn’t want to lose control or allow her daughter to be influence (possibly negatively) by others. But, as we ALL know, the experience of what that child learns OUTSIDE of their parents so called ‘bubble’ allows the child to become a more educated person, better member of society and eventually their own identity within this world.
I perceive it as the dev’s are “homeschooling” CakePHP. They are taking advice from others on how to do certain things but they ultimately are the ones that decide what the framework becomes.
Is that a good thing? IMO, no. They are shielding CakePHP from allowing it to gain it’s full potential. Even if the devs are all the Bill Gates’ of PHP they still aren’t going to make the best decisions.
Alas, IMO, I would actually encourage forks/variants of CakePHP. I think it would create distinctive frameworks that can each focus on more specific roles within their projected use. Look at what debian, ubunutu, redhat, etc did for the linux shell. Even within ubuntu there are variants that are geared towards performance junkies and even KIDS!
@dho:
http://www.collabforce.org - watch out :) I completed the first alpha version of a package manager based on PEAR and is very promising (install, uninstall, update, dependencies, etc). Once I get things squared away I’ll email you and give you the inside scoop on the direction. Thanks for all your support and time you have lend your ears to my ranting :)
@Dérico - very well put, I still remember the commented manual incident a while back in google groups and the official comment was “we are working on that”. I think one of the problem as the moment is core team needs a channel of communication to the user, a official one. The bakery is good for what it is, but the news section is fairly inactive. (cough)*django’s blog highlights weekly activity(cough)
Cakebaker’s blog was very similar to a official channel except it is his personal blog featuring his own opinion.. so sh*t happend..
@Brandon - http://www.collabforce.org, interesting stuff. is it cake related?
@Dérico
I totally agree with you: finally someone who gets to the point in a few simple words. I wasn’t aware of the incident involving the manual, but I must say I am not surprised. Once again - and this is a personal opinion - the whole problem CakePHP has is its development team. Don’t get me wrong though, there are some really *good* elements there like Nate for example, but others seem WAY out of line for the way they keep dealing with people like me, Daniel and Dérico.
@Brandon - would like to know more about collabforce - be Open :P
@Brandon - yes, there are probably some differences between open source project and direct democracy, but I am pretty cool with fact that only members of dev team are making decisions about CakePHP and/or dev team ;) You know, ‘full potential’ which can be borned from plebiscit of non [php|oop|mvc|cakephp] experienced developers is scarying me a little bit. I think there is allways way how to contribute something useful for cake community - if core devs will not pass some enhancement patches/ideas to core code, anybody can publish result of his/her effort at bakery/cakeforge.
@Fabio - you’re humouring me a lot :)
@unbeliever: you too! Your blind trust in everything the CakePHP dev team does/says/believes no matter what other people will ever say is truly amazing.
@speedmax
Yes, CF will include CakePHP as its flagship framework (and obviously will be build with it). I don’t want to limit CF to JUST CakePHP but I think having it as its first supported framework is ideal.
@Tarique:
I will post details on CF.org later this week. The holiday weekend has set me back a few days for my 9-5 job this week :)
@unbeliever:
I agree that opening the source for a “free for all” isn’t ideal. There will always be a need for people to supervise commits to retain the overall integrity of the software. But, I think with a strong set of guidelines and COMMUNICATION between contributors and these “code keepers” is crucial to the success of the software.
Take for example:
https://trac.cakephp.org/ticket/2604
https://trac.cakephp.org/ticket/2146
https://trac.cakephp.org/ticket/2603
https://trac.cakephp.org/ticket/2602
I’m still left wondering why these haven’t been added. It doesn’t break anything and makes the methods more robust. I might be naive, but I don’t think those tickets in any way “hurt” the framework. Am i right here?!!?
Lastly, sorry to say, but the Bakery IMO is sophomoric at best. Although a fantastic concept, it has been done poorly and seems to be completely abandoned. Also, CakeForge is hard to navigate and the developers have a seemingly anonymous existence. I don’t see any advantage for someone to post and maintain a project there.
@all: Thanks for your comments!
@Fabio: As Tarique said, running away is not the solution. I am disappointed about the team, but not the software (or the community). I can use CakePHP without dealing with the team.
@speedmax: Yes, I agree with you that you can learn much from such an event.
I think you cannot use always a gentle title, sometimes you have to use a more provocative title ;-)
@unbeliever: I am aware that some comments have been removed from h3rald’s article in the meantime (even though they are still available via archive.org as someone pointed out in a comment on his blog).
Sure, I have no problem with saying “I trust CakePHP” when it is fully tested. But I think it is unrealistic to expect a high test coverage in 1.2 as it is no fun to write them for existing code and the code was not written for testability. Maybe in the next version (2.0), when PHP 4 support will be dropped and everything has to be adapted to make full use of PHP 5…
@mbavio: CakePHP is the best PHP framework imho. Don’t let you get distracted from what’s going on here and enjoy your cake ;-)
@francky06l: Yeah, such a thunderstorm can sometimes be quite healthy ;-)
@Derico: I agree with you that it should be more decentralized as there are many great ideas out there in the community, but instead of supporting them the strategy of the team is the contrary, i.e. to control as much as possible and to do it on their own…
@Brandon: I think it is necessary that the team decides finally what comes into the framework. But what’s missing is transparency, as an outsider (and even as a team member) you often don’t know what was discussed, what was decided, etc. It all happens in the hidden.
Btw: Cool to hear your project is not dead ;-)
Regarding your tickets, I think there is still a chance they get implemented as they are not closed yet.
I hang out in IRC a lot, and I have been using the Cake framework for about a year now. In all honesty, I don’t know anyone on the Cake dev team, I have no clue who cakebaker, larry masters, nate etc. are; I’ve only heard of some guys on irc called phpnut, nate, ad7six, dhofstet who have been *extremely* helpful and have volunteered their own time to contribute to CakePHP and answer my questions. For free. As a matter of fact I pay $0 for cake and I get my questions answered directly by the dev team much faster than a $5000 piece of software my company has purchased from Microsoft. Go figure.
The reason I feel obliged to write is (believe it or not) to defend the cake admins. I don’t know them from Joe Blow who lives down the street from me, but I think they are being unfairly criticized for making executive decisions. I didn’t read most of the posts above since there’s just too many of them, but I’m responding to the comments of just a few.
Firstly I think people are deluted about open source. They think that open source means anyone and everyone gets access to CVS, can contribute their own code, write their own libraries to be included with the core code, make changes to the core code if they feel like it, etc. Unfortunately, no, because it would never work. Not in Cake, not in RoR, not in any open source project. Try going to another open source project and telling them that you feel there’s a better way to do something and therefore you want to change the core code. They’ll politely tell you to bug off :) Open source means the source is open so that you can create your own libraries, plug-ins, etc. freely and can even contribute to the core code ONCE AUTHORIZED BY ADMINS. My understanding (correct me if I’m wrong) is that changes to the core code must be approved by admins. And thank God that’s the case, otherwise the framework would be sloppy as hell and will be going in 2000 different directions!
So logically it means admins must be assigned. And in cakephp, like all other open source communities (and all ‘teams’ in this world), there must be leaders who make the final decisions. Otherwise you have chaos. My understanding is, guys like nate, larry, etc. are the project admins. It doesn’t mean others can’t contribute, but they make the final decisions.
In all honesty, I feel some people’s “better ideas” are not being taken into consideration, and they are becoming bitter about it. It’s almost a case of taking your ball home with you from the playground. Is there a bit of Naziism from the project admins? Possibly. I have no idea. I don’t know the full story behind this, or Fabio’s situation. What I do know is that when you have leaders who aren’t perfect, sometimes good ideas may be cast aside for the wrong reasons. It’s called life.
Case in point: my impression is that dhofstet had great ideas (and you do; I’ve read your blog religiously), and they weren’t implemented, or maybe was even shoved aside rudely. And thus you feel offended by the cake admins. Would I feel the same? Absolutely. But it doesn’t negate the fact that unfortunately they have final say. You can still make your own libraries, post your own opinions on the blog, etc but again unfortunately they determine who’s on the core dev team and who’s not. And why not? They started the project and we’re all contributing.
I wholeheartedly believe cake, like everything else in this world, has room for improvement. Especially that damn bakery and the docs. But actions speak louder than words; I haven’t contributed a word to the docs and therefore have given up my right to whine. As for the guy who mentioned about starting another collab website for cake: why not just start it anyways?! If it’s a great idea and it’ll take off on its own, it’ll take off on its own! Who cares what the admins think; why direct anger at the admins and use them as the excuse for not starting it up?
dh if anything, please stick around as you’ve been a great help to me. Don’t let rejection (possibly rude rejection) of your ideas by the admin cast you aside. They may be wrong, but the framework’s still excellent imho and that means they’re doing their job.
@cakebaker ok, thanks for answers. It seems that you will stay with us in CakePHP community ;) and I think it is great.
@Brandon yes, I think that you’re right (about those tickets). Lets talk about them once they will be closed for any reason.
@hch nice summary! +1
ehm @Fabio do you want to know why I’m enjoying your posts with laugh? Do you know where you could put your book about 1.2 into if it was already on the market? That’s the point you refused to agree on - 1.2 wasn’t (and still is not) released and there are surely many things which will be adjusted in it before stable release. Forget about your profit, man, and think about profit of community. I think that there will be another books about CakePHP over time - but don’t be surprised that you will not work on them. Same thing as cakebakers case - if workman in car factory says he don’t trust factory products, only his close friends are affected by his opinion. BUT if manager of this factory will say such as thing, he will be fired and never employed again in this company - and he will probably have problems to find a job in whole car industry.
Sorry I’m late to the discussion, been busy and all. Wanted to add mytwocents.
Dho… my only problem with you was that you complained about the unit tests failing. I’m not sure what the official Cake team stance is on failing tests… but come on, that was a nightly build. If it was an official milestone release failing unit tests, your statements of “I don’t trust CakePHP” would be undestandable. Right now I’m just confused about your choice of blog posting actions.
And I’m on nate’s side about you not talking to them about it before you publicized it on your blog. Why? So strange.
@hch: Thanks for your long comment!
I think you got it somehow wrong that people criticize that only the core team can commit code ;-) As you explained that’s a good thing, otherwise the code would be a mess. But what I am missing is transparency, i.e. a public discussion of what’s going on with the code and why things are the way they are.
The collab site you mentioned is afaik on its way. And regarding the docs, I think it is at least partially a self-inflicted problem, e.g. by not responding to people willing to help…
@unbeliever: Thanks for your comment.
I think your answer to Fabio is based on incomplete information. The book project was meant to be realized together with the Cake Software Foundation as “co-author”. It was planned to have a stable version of Cake 1.2 in the end phase of the book writing (as the book was about Cake 1.2). And as the book should be already on the market, you will see that the stable version of Cake 1.2 is a bit late…
@rtconner: Thanks for your comment.
Well, I think if there are tests, then they should run without failures (even if it is only a nightly build). Sure, that’s not always possible, but if you notice failing tests then it should be your priority to fix those obvious problems as soon as possible.
Those failing tests are now known since about two weeks, but they still fail here…
@cakebaker my opinion is that if somebody wants to release book about some software, it is just obvious to wait when this sw is released, or synchronize those tasks. From community angle of view, offical book about CakePHP will be great thing - but I think that quality of 1.2 code takes precedence. So - if release of 1.2 is ‘a bit late’ (could you show me a link stating release date?) then release of book had to be delayed also. Make press on developers of opensource software because of commercial politics is supposed to end this way. Fabio is wrong with his presumption of my ‘blind trust’. My trust becomes from fact that cake developers thinks about community first. Everything else seems to be secondary and ‘book case’ (besides ‘other actions’ ;) of core dev team) just proved this fact. IMHO, off course.
@unbeliever: There is no official release date for 1.2, it gets released “when it is done”.
I’ve just been using cakephp for about 48 hours and found it very handy. Also, I always end to this very useful blog for problem solving. Then I found this post, and very sad to hear you leave it. But glad to hear you still around(at late comments).
I suggest you to keep fighting for the truth, even you’re the evil…:p kidding…
Whatever you do/fight for, please keep this blog shiny with the hot crispy cake recipe..;)
@maulana: Thanks for your comment!
Well, I don’t leave this blog, I left only the CakePHP team ;-)
My personal opinions;
@dho
Sometimes, sentimental behaviour about the situtations couldn’t bring a wanted results. There are better ways to express yourself. Take it easy man.
@cakedevs
You made a cake, if you want to have this cake big enough to eat, you must share it, otherwise remove MIT license and close the source. This is simple reality. When i check the size of comments about this story, i can easily see that you (yes not dho you) have management problems.
People spending time to spread a word on cakephp and of course including this blog, spent time by dho in IRC and every single letter submitted to the source are invaluable. Why don’t you warn before take an action? Why we had to read endless discussions?
Is there a nomenklatura class wrapped around cake community? I hope not.
This is not fair to say we need to “keep house clean”. We are all humans and we need to figure out a better way to communicate and collobrate together.
Again, this is my personal idea, take care all and peace.
@Kunthar: Thanks for your comment!
I am not sad about being no longer a member of the CakePHP team, it is better for me. And in retrospect I should have left earlier…
I just want to say that without your blog, I would have given up on CakePHP long ago. CakePHP has been crippled by its lack of documentation, official or otherwise. Not only is the existing documentation lacking, but there are entire features that are completely undocumented. I recently saw a link to some preliminary Cake 1.2 documentation that was locked down and taken offline because it was ‘incomplete’. How ridiculous is that! I think any documentation, no matter how incomplete or inaccurate it may be, is better than the complete lack of documentation that exists right now.
Anyway, that was sort of a tangent and I would like to thank you for helping CakePHP in the area it needs most - more documentation - even if the core devs can’t seem to recognize it as a contribution.
Well I have to say I agree with dho on this one. It’s not the first time the core CakePHP team have been bastards. Unfortunately the core team seem to want to keep an iron grip on their source code, which I admire - but look where it’s got them, CakePHP 1.2 is *still* in development, I started using it back in December 2006.
They really need to get their management sorted out and get releasing stable code. Release Early, Release Often.
Oh, and they also need to stop being so sarcastic to people, it really puts a lot of newbies off.
@Kunthar: Well, actually that’s the beauty of an open-source license, isn’t it? At any time if the management issues get to be too arduous for people to fool with, they can always fork the project. I’m not advocating that by a longshot — I’m not even remotely competent to contribute code, so I’m hardly competent to advocate running off in my own direction! — just stating that it’s an implicit incentive for o/s projects to keep their devs happy. Once key people get dissatisfied and a project forks, it’s up to the market to decide whose ideas are better. Of course the same can happen in proprietary-source but having to start from scratch is a much stronger disincentive to walk out.
While I’m not advocating a code fork, I’m pretty close to advocating a de facto documentation fork. I really don’t get the 1.2 manual thing. I would make more noise about it but I don’t want to piss off people whose help I need in getting up to speed on CakePHP!
@Kevin: I share your concerns. What would the ideal documentation look like? How can we get there?
@Kevin, Anonymous, Philip: Thanks for your comments!
@Kevin: Yes, I agree with you, the move with the 1.2 manual is hard to understand. If they would make it public even at an early stage, it would be a win-win situation: the users of CakePHP 1.2 would get some help to get started, and the docs team would get feedback from real users.
@Anonymous: Yes, the stable version of CakePHP 1.2 is quite late…
…and get over it.
just great!